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Malaysia under Prime Minister Najib: Only SLOGANS

Malaysia under Prime Minister Najib: Only SLOGANS

FROM THIS

1Malaysia

TO THIS

Malaysia-Endless Possibilities

BETTER THIS?

Happy Birthday Malaysia

August 25, 2013

MY COMMENT:Mr Hussin, I would like to support your idea that we should be positive about this “Endless Possibilities” campaign and regard it as an effort to brand our nation. 1Malaysia was a brand too, although it is not an original idea.

In the 1980s when I was with Sime Darby in Singapore, the Government there had a national day theme song, One People, One Nation, One Singapore and went on to create a united Singapore. Israel too had a similar campaign and now they have this EP concept. Don’t forget Altantuya’s Mongolia. What has become of Najib’s 1Malaysia? It is a sham. We are today very divided along lines of race and religion.

Both Tun Mahathir and Tun Abdullah had their share of slogans. Slogans are meaningless. Hiding behind slogans, Tun Mahathir, for example, destroyed the civil service, subdued the Judiciary, humiliated our Rulers, and weakened other institutions of governance. He created an all powerful Executive Branch and subjugated our Parliament. So, you cannot blame Malaysians for being cynical.

I for one would like to see this government get down to managing our economy, fighting rampant corruption and crime, and stopping those who use race and religion for political ends. Let us in stead celebrate our rich diversity; let us recognise the contributions and sacrifices of all Malaysians, irrespective of race, religion and creed, and let us galvanise our creativity and talent to build a truly united nation. To achieve this goal, we need an enlightened and responsible leadership. That is what is lacking today. Slogans won’t help.–Din Merican

Malaysia Branded with Endless Possibilities

As the world becomes more globalised, countries need to develop a clear brand proposition to communicate national identities abroad.

Nation branding is becoming increasingly important as countries compete for a share of the world’s consumers, tourists, exports, investors and the ever important talents.

Much ado has been said at the recent unveiling and leaked national campaign undertaken by PM Najib’s Administration, “Endless Possibilities”. Meme, jokes and ridiculed follow suit since then with many taking it to social media to air their grievances that the campaign was another sloganeering effort with no real substance.But is it without substance? Is the act of ridiculing justified?

“Endless Possibilities” or EP for short is a nation branding campaign aimed at not only attracting tourism but also expanding the Malaysian brand into various sectors including business, culture, lifestyle and sports.

In short, nation branding is an effort to infuse the values that we Malaysians take pride in and expanding them into other facets of the country to ultimately create an edge in the global arena.

While not arguing about whether the slogan and tagline used in this campaign is a result of masterful word wizardry, I would like to invite everyone to take a step back.

I believe that more important than finding the answer is to ask the right question. Thus, I pose this to the esteemed readers of this website, instead of arguing and asking about who has first dips on the slogan, shouldn’t we instead focus on finding ways to galvanise Malaysians to partake in this national effort to create a Malaysia brand.

The Future Brand Country Brand Index (CBI) report 2012-2013 puts Malaysia at the 36th place in terms of country brand rankings and the same report also listed Malaysia amongst the future 15 nations that will be tomorrow’s leading country brands.

By my account, I think it’s timely that we embark on this nation branding effort today. No country has done this before you say? In the same report, our neighbour down south is amongst the 25 top country brands in the world, together with the likes of Sweden, Denmark and The United Kingdom. Not only that, it has also won praises in its leaders single minded effort to undertake nation branding effort.

Now that we have established that other nations are doing it too, shouldn’t we instead find ways to contribute to “Endless Possibilities”?

While I am suggesting that we support EP, I am also against supporting in blind faith.Moving forward, as a concern citizen of this country, I am pushing for greater transparency in our nation branding effort.

Details such as cost and benefit analysis must be made available. On top of that, any engagement and discourse to explain EP must be undertaken and it has to be as inclusive as possible. Let us not feel that we have been excluded in the roll out of this nation’s branding campaign.

Let’s go beyond the slogan, rhetoric and the divisive politics that has reared its ugly head post GE 13.EP’s essence is reflected in the drive towards achievement against all odds, backed by belief that we have what it takes to get there.

Looking back, this country has demonstrated time and again, our ability to emerge resilient after financial, political and health crisis. We’ve learnt and matured from our prior challenges and are now well on our way to realise Vision 2020.

I urged the good people of this country to hold back just a little until the official launch of the nation’s branding exercise, “Endless Possibilities” and suspend our judgment. After all, aren’t we all a courteous lot who pride ourselves in our ability and intellect to make sound judgment after deducing all the fact?

Until the facts are out there, any analysis and induction of the campaign remains a hypothesis, a guess at best. Again, until all the facts are out there, the best we all can come up with are “endless” guesses.

25 thoughts on “Malaysia under Prime Minister Najib: Only SLOGANS”

Common, Mr Prime Minister, enough of your meaningless slogans and KPIs. Fix the Economy and Get Serious about Good Governance. We are disappointed with you because you are dancing to someone’s tune. –Din Merican

Din.
Jangan buang masa dengan Najib.Dia dah kena QC dengan Rosmah.Kena balada sami India dan bomoh Indonesia.He can’t think properly.
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Hamid, as long as he is Prime Minister, he will be under my microscope. Our country is in deep trouble under his administration. So I will not stop. I hope you will not too.–Din Merican

Perhaps only in Bolehland, such sloganeering is very much in vogue! The previous PM too had his fair share, what with Islam Hadhari and with as many Corridors as the palatial PM’s residence!
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The previous one to Badawi had slogans too. Berish, Cakap, Amanah; Kepimpinan Melalui Teladan, Malaysia Boleh and Wawasan 2020. They all ended up sapuing everything in sight with mega-projects and privatization (or is it piratisation?).–Din Merican

in Germany the USofA is known from the beginning as the ‘Land der unbegrenzte Möglichkeiten’ (land of unlimited possibilities) where you can become rich by working hard and not just by belonging to a certain race or religion. can we say the same of Malaysia????
ten years ago this slogan was modified by Toyota as ‘nichts ist unmöglich’ (nothing is impossible) for their advanced technology.
don’t we have super-morons as leaders and advisers??

sloganeering is good for a company advertising its product but not for a nation. just look at the advertisments of Indonesia in BBC compared to the bland Malaysian equivalent so predictable and always harping on its pseudo-multiculturalism, has Malaysia nothing else to offer??
the umnob/bn government is making a mockery of our capabilities.

It is time to put an end to this nation building shit of the ’60s. It is time for UMNO and others bent on messing with our minds and those of our children to call it quits with the socio-engineering bull of the ’70s.

Its not simply slogan and its not just Nero fiddling as Rome burns. Its really helping to keep the fire-fighters away even if the house is burning..In other words Najib is a co-conspirator as the diabolical plans and goals of Mahathir is getting done while his brain-washed conspirator are simply out of control, not caring for the truth, hell-bend on lies including not an inkling of care if it results in unimaginable tragedies..

This country is already broken and will collapse, socially, nationally at the very least unless something is done and it must begin with ending UMNO/BN and going after Mahathir’s for full accounting..

At least Bersih Cepat Amanah was ORIGINAL though he failed horribly to live that through.

The 1Malaysia and Endless Possibilities are PLAGIARIZED from Israel and he paid millions to his plagiazisers con-sultants.

This country has ONE major weakness; only ONE.
and that is the political will to do what it says will do. If it has execute Bersih Cepat Amanah, we dont even need Bersih 1.0. ………. Now Bersih 4.0 is underway.

Some countries have ONE major strength; their political will to do what they say they will do.

One executable slogan will do; we have NONE.
We have none because there is no SHOGUN among those politicized to lead.

Sheez, malunya dah tak de ilham Najib’s Pemandu and so called think – tank! Ciplak, ciplak and more ciplak. Senang jadi PM `cut and paste’ its IT in its worse form. Goodbya, Najib, come October 19th’ We are puking all over with your `yukky’ Slogans. Time to potong Gaji and EJECT you. Brain gone to seed? Just read aglowing writeup by `ABiTW’ re the day the Late TUN body arrived at the airport. The writer was trying to sell `Tanda Putra’ to others to go and see. I figured suhaimi Baba had already taken RM 4.8millions for this UMNO glitzy so not me!

Really disgusted with this moron of a PEE AM. Was proud to be a Malayaian, now NO MORE. They are all protecting their aholes to get bigger by daily sodomizing themselves so more shit can flow out.DISGUSTING to the core.

Endless Possibilities of
1. Ending racial polarization and creating a Malaysian Malaysia identity;
2. Ending corruption and rent seeking;
3. Ending the waste of public funds in pre-election advertisinfs, employtment of con-sultans to con the public (agitprop), the use of government agencies for the BN agenda against the opposition and reforming the tainted Election Commission;
4. reforming the eduction system to provide quality education for the masses;
5. Learning from the Asian Rare Earth episode to not repeat it with Lynas;
6. Restoring the independence of the Judiciary, Police, MACC and other agencies;
7. Respecting the sanctity of the Constitution and the inalienable rights of the Malaysians;
8.End the sham of giving student visas to those involved in drugs, scams, prostitution and other illegal activities;
9. Punish those who commit treason by giving ICs for political support;
10. The list is endless. We have just scratched the surface. By the way, what happened to Janji di-tepati?

“I for one would like to see this government get down to managing our economy, fighting rampant corruption and crime, and stopping those who use race and religion for political ends. Let us instead celebrate our rich diversity; let us recognise the contributions and sacrifices of all Malaysians, irrespective of race, religion and creed, and let us galvanise our creativity and talent to build a truly united nation. To achieve this goal, we need an enlightened and responsible leadership. That is what is lacking today. Slogans won’t help.”–Din Merican

Din, you so precisely put in words what, I believe, a majority of Malaysians hope for. You are not alone. The writer, Rahman Hussin, must live on a different planet. Or perhaps he is one of the many thousands of advisers?

The ONLY slogan we need to challenge is “GOVERNANCE”
because all straight roads points to that. all crocked ones points away from it.

Governance is Government and Government is everything. With Governance as slogan, anything going wrong will be bad governance as there is only one straight highways to governance and no by-ways. A straight highway is clear, no tolls, potholes, bums or bus stop. Can have uphill or downhill but no surprises. The Japanese call this Heijunka meaning level.

yes, also put an end to racial baiting and shit-stirring exercise of Mahathir.
to be fair to our ‘elected’ PM: either you start governing this country properly or quit now, enough damage has been done the last couple of years and its time to put the country in order. malaysians will give you another chance if you get cracking and put the old billy goat in jail, who is endlessly fomenting trouble.